Tag Archives: Email Open rate

One of the most imprudent decisions email marketers make is relying heavily (or even worse, solely) upon email opens and click rate and skipping deeper parameters that measure ROI. Though open and click metrics are vital parameters to maintain email deliverability, marketers need to look beyond these metrics and take a holistic view on all the metrics and parameters to fathom how campaigns are performing from delivery, visibility, spam complaints, devices being used, revenue per subscribers, email read time, subscriber lifetime and unsubscribe rate, email conversion and many more. Lack of wider perspectives hinders marketers from monitoring, measuring and evaluating effectiveness of email campaigns accurately.

There are several reasons marketers need to widen from vain email metrics to be able to take well-informed decisions to understand how their email subscribers are behaving, their email usage, actions taken, scope of opportunities, sales and many others.

Not worth if it’s not the North Star

One of the most failsafe tricks to select the right set of KPIs for an email campaign is that the chosen metrics should be able to guide marketers in which way to steer their campaigns like a ‘North Star’. The metrics should be closely tied to the campaign goals and budget, and marketers should not be stuck with other metrics that hardly indicate if emails are meeting the goals. Ideally marketers and brands should evaluate if they are using too many or useless KPIs or if they are goal oriented. The more you focus on all those opens and clicks related metrics, bigger the risks of them fixated on wrong KPIs.

Over emphasis on vain metrics

We recommend our clients and marketers not stressing on surface or vain metrics such as email opens, web traffic, and email clicks etc., while there are deeper metrics that bind subscription, email content consumption, sales conversions etc. Some companies may claim they do not wish to measure sales or ROI of their email campaigns, however, they do not need to measure ROI or other deeper metrics, why should they focus on clicks or other metrics? Surface metrics often distract marketers from overseeing their actual business and marketing goals and keeping them away from their subscribers’ preferences, uses, actions, experience or their satisfactions. That’s why measuring success of email subject lines by open rates would be an unwise metric decision, since the aim of subject lines is not limited to just getting emails opened, but to engage the right segment of prospects and customers who are interested or willing to spend time in your information or make purchases. Thus, the right audience will be the segment that will be converted and take the intended actions that emails ask or guide them to do. Hence, associating subject line success with the conversions will lead email campaigns toward success and help alleviate bounce rates that clickbait subject lines are most likely to produce.

Inadequate funnel visibility

One of the most prominent research findings from 2018 State of Email Analytics report concluded that funnel visibility into campaign performance starts plummeting after focusing too much on metrics like email opens and email clicks. If the performance starts diminishing after measuring campaigns by some metrics, then how come those metrics become email marketing KPIs? Hence, selecting the right set of metrics which are able to deep scan your email campaigns and can tell the value per subscriber, spam complaint rates, unsubscribe rate, hard bounce and soft bounce rates, new subscriber acquisition, acquisition cost, sales conversion data, overall email revenue etc. These metrics are usually the ones that brands target to track their next six months or 12 months email campaign performance.

So, are you selecting the right set of email metrics that your email marketing campaigns were actually designed to perform and achieve? Want to know if your email marketing campaigns are aligned to the right side of metrics? We are here to clear the air and make you focus and steer toward the email marketing success. Your small comment below is all we need and to start discussing 1:1. Just write down your email metric dilemma and we will take over from there.

Research and studies have repeatedly emphasized the benefits and effectiveness of welcome emails. The open rates of welcome emails are often times as much as 50% higher than other email message types.

Why?

The simple reason why welcome emails work is because prospects want to know about your product/services and discover various offers that are in store. Since your prospects are already interested in you, and they signed up for you, you get better chances to build relationship with them.

Secondly, they anticipate welcome emails as soon as they subscribe or sign up with you as a token of gratitude from you. That’s why the sooner you send it, the better results (read: higher open rates) it produces.

Here we have created the ultimate cheat sheet containing what a welcome email should include, which elements draw open rates and generate revenue, common email blunders to avoid, and how to write effective call to action messages. So, keep scrolling, keep them handy.

Grab the opportunity to highlight the best assets of your website

Take advantage of the prize you possess now – their interest in your product/website/services and thus, their attention. It’s time to make the optimum use of this opportunity, and talk about (yes, subtly promote) the coolest features and offers of your business. Emphasize what you can offer them that your competitors are not offering, at present. Shower them with more free resources to download, and your genuine appreciation for subscribing with you.

A compelling call to action to guide them what to do next

Your welcome mail should appear as the first interaction with your prospects on the context of thanking them, however, it ideally is your first email to prompt your prospects to take some kind of actions. That’s why a compelling and guiding call to action is a must to make your readers click, open the mail and take an action – such as, click some recent or popular blog posts, visit your revamped website, install a beta version of your mobile app, register for a webinar or an event, or download an e-book, to name a few. Remember, it’s your well-written, focused, concise and no-frill CTA that can drive action effectively – so, just make sure it’s there in your welcome mail.

Personalized treatment

Personalized treatments can not only benefit you with higher open rates, but chances of conversion, too. So, start with personalizing the welcome message by their name and shun away from common blunders of “Hi there” or “Hello subscriber” greetings. Such greetings make your mail appear as automated messages sans personal touches and they feel uninterested in opening such mails. Instead, use a dynamic tag to fetch their name from the database and send greetings by their name to make it look more personal. This is just the beginning.

Next, ask them what kind of content they prefer, what type of offers will make them happy and the frequency in which they want to be mailed – whether weekly, monthly, bimonthly or as you create a new whitepaper or e-book. Once they are able to define the frequency, the fewer subscribers will want to unsubscribe or mark your mail as spam.

Introduce your social profiles

Your welcome emails present the best opportunities to gain followers on your Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or even subscribe with your YouTube videos since they are interested and want to know more about you. When they have signed up to get your mails or want to read your blog posts, they are more likely to trail you on your social pages and profiles, discover special offers and announcements you share exclusively for your social followers and check out your educational or seasonal videos – therefore, placing all the social buttons on your welcome mails will increase open rates as well as your social reach.

Surveys and polls

One major purpose of welcome emails should be to make them think that you are genuinely interested in what they want from your products, services, email campaigns, or the content they want to read. Create a survey by including a few questions they are most willing to answer, in order to bring customized offers for them. And yes, do not forget to ask their feedback on your brand – make them feel important while you gather the information you need to optimize your product.

Other than these elements, you must include a link to unsubscribe from mails. By letting them unsubscribe from your mails will sure do facilitate your prospects to leave you, but they are unlikely to report your mail as spam which will permanently divert them to trash can. Until they want to restore them to inbox – but, how many of us mark spam mails ‘not spam’ and redirect to our inbox? On the other hand, the ease of unsubscribing from your mails can encourage them to sign up and join you again, as long as they feel free to leave as and when they want.

So, are you ready to put these welcome emails ideas into action? Tell us what you think – we are eager to hear you always.

Are your emails generating quality traffic for your business?

There are lots of expectations marketers count on from their marketing initiatives. For example seasoned marketers understand Email campaigns to be one of the most powerful tools. They should be in your list of initiatives because when done right, emails help drive traffic and spread awareness instantly and cost effectively when they are opened. But, what if after following a strategic approach and putting hard work in designing content, structure and design, the email campaign does not turn up with the expected results? It may be a frustrating situation to handle, Isn’t it? There’s no denying that you want your money to bring returns, but what if just 10% of the people have opened the mail, now what? It doesn’t have to be this way.

In order to stay away from annoying low performance, let’s look at the seven great tips that can increase your email open rate when applied correctly.

Include Interesting Subject Lines: Your Subject line is the first glimpse that incites customers to either click the mail or ignore it. Hence, it is a “must” that you create attractive and attention grabbing subject lines. This can be done if you keep users’ expectations in mind. At the same time, always prioritize customers’ benefits and announce the reward of taking actions. Your customer’s eyes are moving fast when scanning their inbox, so remember personalized, simple and short subject lines are believed to be more effective. You only have a very short fraction of time to catch your reader’s attention. Your subject line is your gate-keeper. Make it count. Take your time to craft the most powerful subjectline, short, relevant and interesting.

Focus on Behavioral Targeting: It is just not “open” rate, but also “click through” rate and “conversion” rate that depends upon behavioral data. These statistics should be used to design your promotional campaigns. Practicing this one principle will bring you better lead generation as well as an improved ROI. In order to do so, it is important to understand which emails have high open rate and know which emails frustrate customers. A thorough analysis of responsive and unresponsive customers can assure you generate a high level of customer responses. In short, know your customer, study their habits do the research or invest in an expert service to assist in this process.

Relevant Messaging: It is only relevant information that evokes response. Hence, build your approach of what customer wants, build realistic, rewarding and unique messages, avoid spam, and schedule your delivery and test call-to-action by using a planned strategy to gather data, relevant to the goals.

Delivery Time: Though there are no hard and fast rules, delivery time plays an important role in the success of your campaign. In order to decide upon delivery time, try experimenting with different days and times. Compare the data to locate the best target dates and times, which score the highest open and click through rates. Only after this step has been done can you further fine-tune your message by astonishing the recipients with new elements in your messaging

Update Contact Information on Databases: It is a must to stay active in updating email addresses, as your lists decay with time. You should also keep adding new customers to your lists regularly.

Timeliness: You should never miss out on scheduling your campaigns throughout the calendar. Focus on emails which feature ongoing events or breaking news. Make sure that your subject line makes a difference to your targeted audience, even if there is a common theme, remember to unveil the story or offer in your progressive campaign as you build follow-up emails.

Consider Mobile Device: Don’t forget to consider the appearance of email on mobile devices, as SmartPhones have revolutionized the marketing industry and have surpassed the user rate over the PC and laptop users. Check out the display quality and your links and be sure to optimize your email messages for all of the different mobile device platforms.

If you want your email campaign to bring out fruitful results for you, do follow these tips and see the positive impact it will they have on your email “open rate” and “click through” rate. By applying these principles, you will optimize your email marketing strategy and assess the campaign performance over time so that you have a performing email campaign with high returns.